Namaqualand (Northern Cape, South Africa) The Khoisan languages of southern Africa: a brief introduction. Dr Menán du Plessis, Research Associate in the Dept of Linguistics, Stellenbosch University Our core topics for today • Early documentation, distribution and present day status of the !Ui languages. • General typological properties of !Ui languages. • Debate: how best to analyse clicks. Distribution • It is not easy to give an accurate picture of the former range of the South African ǃUi languages. • The so-called ‘Bushmen’ of the Cape tended to live in small but mobile bands, and may have covered an extensive territory as they moved after the changing vegetation of the different seasons, and the associated migrations of game animals. Distribution • Their small groups were originally often closely associated with individual clans of the Khoi. • Dutch settlers, organised into quasi-military groups called commandos, conducted vicious raids aimed at destroying their communities. Dorothea Bleek’s Comparative Vocabularies (1929) • S1 = ǀXam • S2 = ǂUngkwe + • S3 = ǁXegwi + Distribution and status • Almost all varieties are now extinct. • ǀXam was documented extensively by Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd, from the 1870s onward. Their consultants came from the Kenhardt district in the Northern Cape, among other places. • Various ǀNuu-like dialects (and some eastern outliers) were documented from c.1911 – 1936, by Dorothea Bleek, Carl Meinhof, Clement Doke and Louis Maingard, and later also by Ernst Westphal. • Following the rediscovery of about two dozen elderly speakers in 1997, linguists over the past decade have worked to document Nǀuu (or Nǁng), now spoken by only a few remaining elders of the ǂKhomani San. The ǀXam legacy from the 19th century 1827 - 1875 1834 - 1914 Wilhelm Bleek and his sister-in-law, Lucy Lloyd, who documented ǀXam. Lloyd continued Bleek’s work after his death, and was later assisted by her niece, Dorothea. The ǀXam legacy from the 19th century Wilhelm Bleek originally came out to South Africa to be of assistance to the new British governor, George Grey, although he began by assisting Bishop Colenso in Natal with work on Zulu. The ǀXam legacy from the 19th century Wilhelm Bleek was at first more interested in comparative Bantu studies: he named the family, worked out various sound correspondences, and devised the system of noun class numbering. The ǀXam legacy from the 19th century He also corresponded with missionaries, and learned more about Nama – and a variety of Nǀuu – from Krönlein. The ǀXam legacy from the 19th century • Bleek began to obtain access to other speakers of ‘Bushman’ languages • The ‘Breakwater’ was a project to build a sea-arm that would protect ships entering Table Bay. The work involved heavy labour, and was considered fit for prisoners from the Breakwater gaol. • Some of the prisoners came from up country, and while a few may have committed murders, most were guilty of small crimes – such as stealing a sheep for food. The ǀXam legacy from the 19th century • The Bleek-Lloyd notebooks contain an extensive repertoire of narratives in ǀXam. This manuscript material can now be freely accessed online through the Digital Bleek and Lloyd. • Some of the stories were published in 1911, as the Specimens of Bushman Folklore. (Available from the Internet Archive) From the published version of the story in the Specimens of Bushman Folklore (Bleek and Lloyd, 1911). Page from Lucy Lloyd’s manuscript notebook, on the Digital Bleek and Lloyd. The ǀXam legacy from the 19th century • Multi-disciplinary interest: rock art, history, archaeology, literature • Actual analysis of the language - not so much! The legacy from the 20th century • Dorothea Bleek (1873 – 1948) was the daughter of Wilhelm Bleek and Jemima Lloyd. Returned to South Africa and carried out field work from about 1911 onwards. • Came up with the classification ‘Southern Bushman’ for the languages later renamed ǃUi-Taa. • Her Bushman Dictionary (1956), is available from the Internet Archive. Dorothea Bleek in the field c. 1911-1916 A legacy from the late 20th century • Various other scholars working in the 1920s and 1930s collected a few short narratives and wordlists for ǃUi languages such as ǂUngkwe, and a variety spoken by the ǂKhomani San. • The documentation of ǂKhomani took place when the community was assembled at Bain’s Camp in 1936 – along with some speakers of ǀ’Auo. (Some members of the ǂKhomani San were taken to Johannesburg to take part in the (British) Empire Exhibition in the same year!) • During the 1960s, Ernst Westphal collected data for a language he called Nǀhuki. (Now digitised and available online.) • By the end of this era, it was generally assumed that the last of the South African ‘Bushman’ languages had vanished. Most speakers switched to Afrikaans or Nama. The rediscovery of Nǀuu speakers! • In 1997, people from various advocacy groups who were assisting the ǂKhomani San with a land rights claim discovered that one of the elders, Elsie Vaalbooi, could still speak the language! • Soon afterwards, other speakers started to come forward, and eventually about two dozen frail and elderly speakers were identified. • Efforts to record the language slowly got underway over the next decade. • A preliminary grammar has been published by Chris Collins and Levi Namaseb (2011), and the preparation of a dictionary is in progress. Other work is also still in progress. The rediscovery of Nǀuu speakers! Ouma ǀUna Rooi of the ǂKhomani San was one of the last fluent speakers of Nǀuu. She died on 3 March 2012. The rediscovery of Nǀuu speakers! • Ouma Antjie Kassie, died 7 January 2013. The rediscovery of Nǀuu speakers! Ouma ǀUna (in black) with two of her sisters, telling Levi Namaseb (far right) and local children about the time her parents went with Donald Bain to Johannesburg in 1936 for the Empire Exhibition. The rediscovery of Nǀuu speakers! • A preliminary grammar has been published by Chris Collins and Levi Namaseb (2011), and the preparation of a dictionary is in progress. Other work is also still in progress. • The discovery of the speakers has enabled linguists to undertake sophisticated phonetic studies using modern techniques. Let’s now take a closer look at some of the specific features of !Ui languages. Much as before, we can only take a brief safari tour. Common properties of JU and TUU languages i. Multiple gender systems not based on masculine and feminine sub- categorisation of nouns. ii. SVO pattern. iii. Some true adjectives; many other descriptive stems used in relative constructions. iv. Suppletive patterns of plural formation in the case of certain nouns and verbs (?). v. Inclusive/exclusive distinction in 1st and 2nd person. vi. Use of compound verbs (serial verb constructions?) vii. Introduction of an additional argument by means of a special morpheme. viii. Use of a wider range of contrastive vowel colourations and click accompaniments than KHOE languages. Aspects of nouns, pronouns and the noun phrase Gender system rd 3 Sing Pl • One of the features that distinguishes !Ui from Taa <Animate> ha hi languages is that they seem to have only two genders, whereas Taa languages have at <Inanimate> hi hi least five, and possibly more. Gender system typical of ǃUi • Gender apparently is not overtly 3rd Sing Pl indexed in !Ui languages, but seems to be reflected only in the <Animate> ha hi choice of pronouns. • There may be vestigial suffixes on nouns that have not yet been <Inanimate> hi hi recognised! • There may be a more complicated system of agreement that has not yet recognised! Gender system typical of ǃUi Page from Bleek and Lloyd’s Specimens of Bushman Folklore. ha(ng) is the pronoun used for Animate singulars, and here refers to the ǀXam man. Inclusive/Exclusive distinction in ǃUi Sing. Pl 1st pers. Incl. - i st 1 pers. Excl. ŋ si The pronouns illustrated are from ǀXam, but similar ones 2nd pers. a u are used in the other !Ui languages. Singular-plural noun suppletion Singular-plural noun suppletion Descriptive stems • We might expect to find perhaps a handful of ‘true’ adjectives … • Wilhelm Bleek made some early observations: Descriptive stems • We might expect to find a handful of ‘true’ adjectives … • Wilhelm Bleek made some early observations: Poss N Adj (ha ǀnā gwai) Descriptive stems in relative constructions The official motto of the new South Africa is in ǀXam !Ke e: ǀxarra ǁke ‘People who are different are the same’ (NB: ǀxara ‘other’ is in fact a loan from a Khoekhoe source.) Adpositions? • Very few adpositions have been identified. For the most part they appear to be prepositions. • Most of the relations that might be expressed by adpositions are instead expressed via the verbal system. Aspects of verbs and the verbal system SVO pattern SVO pattern Note also the use of the special morpheme au to introduce an additional argument. Singular-plural verb suppletion (Nǀuu) • It seems that there are not as many suppletive verbs in !Ui as we have seen in Taa and JU – but new studies may find more. • Are there ‘ergative-like’ alignments in !Ui, similar to those we have seen in JU? We don’t know yet! Complex predicates Early analysis by Bleek Early analysis by Bleek Complex predicates Complex predicates • In ǀXam it is not unusual to find several verbs as part of a (seemingly) single construction. • This is usually because ǀXam uses verb-like forms to express Tense, Aspect, Modality and Polarity (positive or negative status of the proposition). (The sequences of verbs greatly resemble similar patterns found in the Bantu languages, where they are usually referred to as multi-verb constructions. The Bantu constructions differ from serial verb constructions in that there is a dependency relation between V1 and V2.) From Tom Güldemann’s analysis (in Vossen, ed.